In the surgery of bone cutting, ultrasonic osteotome powered systems are often used for cutting. The ultrasonic osteotome powered systems convert electrical energy into mechanical energy through ultrasonic transducers, contacted bone tissues are completely destroyed by high-frequency ultrasonic vibration, and since the amplitude of vibration is generally about 100 μm, the damage to blood vessels and nerve tissues is weak. Therefore, they have high surgery safety in applications such as spinal and neurological surgery.
However, at present, the completion of the orthopedic and neurological surgery mainly relies on the doctor's manual operation of the ultrasonic osteotome powered systems. Since the doctors inevitably apply a longitudinal pressure substantially perpendicular to the bone during the operation, which manual operation has the problem of poor control over the longitudinal direction, when the ultrasonic osteotome powered systems cut through the bone, the longitudinal force applied by the doctors is too large to easily cause damage to the nerves, spinal cord and other tissues under the bone, and thus there is a certain risk of surgery. Moreover, due to the interaction between the ultrasonic vibration and the bone during the doctor's manual operation and the irregular curved shape of the bone, the ultrasonic osteotome powered systems will have a certain transverse vibration and displacement during cutting, which makes it difficult for the doctors to accurately control the ultrasonic osteotome powered systems, thereby resulting in a reduced cutting accuracy.
The robot-assisted surgical systems mainly rely on the sensing technology such as position sensors, angle sensors and force feedback sensors to control electric motors to achieve high-precision feedback control, which can effectively solve the problem of poor controllability and jitter existing in the doctor's manual operation and improve the safety of the surgical operation. However, the traditional robotic surgical systems lack effective bone tissue cutting tools, and can hardly complete the orthopedic surgery, especially the orthopedic minimally invasive surgery.
Therefore, there is a need for a robot-assisted ultrasonic osteotome powered system which integrates an ultrasonic osteotome powered system and a robotic surgical system.